How to cheat at games

THERE is nothing new about cheating at computer games, but the rise of online multiplayer contests—from shoot-em-ups such as Quake and Half Life to relatively sedate world-building games such as Everquest—has turned the art of the virtual con into a technological arms race that has spurred some of the cleverest engineering on the Internet. In a single-player game it is easy enough for those who do not have the skills or patience to beat the computer—it is usually just a matter of typing in a few “secret” codes. But online it becomes an exercise in reverse-engineering, network-hacking and psychology. Cheating a computer is no fun, but cheating real people, it would seem, is irresistible.